Game teeters on brink RU rolls dice on future

THIS is Australian rugby’s live-or-die moment, and Raelene Castle has taken the game to the precipice.

A 25-year relationship between Rugby Australia and Fox Sports lays in ruin today after the broadcaster decided to cease actively negotiating for the rights from 2021-25.

There is always brinkmanship and threat during multimillion-dollar negotiations of this kind – part and parcel of the game of rights deals.

But never before have we seen a situation where effectively both rugby and News Corp have walked away from the table.

Influential figures within RA believe the game is better off with another partner, criticising News Corp’s coverage of rugby and its administrators in recent years – particularly Alan Jones’ weekly column in The Australian.

They obviously don’t read the rugby league pages.

RA chief Castle and Foxtel boss Patrick Delaney haven’t spoken in weeks. Delaney was spotted at the Sail GP launch in

Darling Harbour yesterday morning but was a notable absentee from the Super Rugby launch a fortnight ago.

Castle is banking on rugby’s diehard audience – a key to Fox Sports’ subscriber base – as the ace in her pack, the reason the broadcaster will not walk away from the code despite its low ratings.

But Fox is calling Castle’s bluff, confident if she takes rugby to streaming service Optus, the game will die.

Optus bought the English Premier League rights for $50 million a year in 2015, then signed on again from 2019-22 for an undisclosed sum.

However, there is no production cost for them. Optus merely takes the feed from Sky and puts their logo on it. Can they pay what Fox Sports is offering, and then deliver coverage of all Australian games with camera crews, commentators and production staff?

When RA cut the Western Force in 2017, as part of a threeteam cull to make Super Rugby more appealing, Fox stood by its existing financial deal despite losing content.

The game’s stature has steadily declined since then.